Comments on: Google apparently scrubs military contractor partner listing, after Pando reporthttp://pando.com/2014/03/29/google-apparently-scrubs-military-contractor-partner-listing-after-pando-report/
speaking truth to the new powerTue, 03 Mar 2015 20:05:19 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: RicardoJohnsonhttp://pando.com/2014/03/29/google-apparently-scrubs-military-contractor-partner-listing-after-pando-report/#comment-84680
Thu, 03 Apr 2014 13:58:59 +0000http://pando.com/?p=135041#comment-84680Ahahaha looks like Ray Cromwell was right, you guys should feel bad for attacking him
]]>By: RicardoJohnsonhttp://pando.com/2014/03/29/google-apparently-scrubs-military-contractor-partner-listing-after-pando-report/#comment-84679
Thu, 03 Apr 2014 13:58:58 +0000http://pando.com/?p=135041#comment-84679Ahahaha looks like Ray Cromwell was right, you guys should feel bad for attacking him
]]>By: Semper Coghttp://pando.com/2014/03/29/google-apparently-scrubs-military-contractor-partner-listing-after-pando-report/#comment-84510
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 10:39:11 +0000http://pando.com/?p=135041#comment-84510My guess: Google was told they were giving the People’s “Liberation” Army a list of quite juicy targets that would all be vulnerable to Google Apps exploits. Of course, I’d be floored if they hadn’t already assembled such a list.
]]>By: Semper Coghttp://pando.com/2014/03/29/google-apparently-scrubs-military-contractor-partner-listing-after-pando-report/#comment-84509
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 10:33:40 +0000http://pando.com/?p=135041#comment-84509Perhaps Google was told they were giving the PLA a list of juicy companies that would all be vulnerable to Google App exploits.
]]>By: Semper Coghttp://pando.com/2014/03/29/google-apparently-scrubs-military-contractor-partner-listing-after-pando-report/#comment-84508
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 10:33:39 +0000http://pando.com/?p=135041#comment-84508Perhaps Google was told they were giving the PLA a list of juicy companies that would all be vulnerable to Google App exploits.
]]>By: RayCromwellhttp://pando.com/2014/03/29/google-apparently-scrubs-military-contractor-partner-listing-after-pando-report/#comment-84442
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 22:10:08 +0000http://pando.com/?p=135041#comment-84442Umfuld RayCromwell I see that Pando’s new found agitprop clickbait is attracting only debaters of the highest intellectual calibre. Apparently, when the NSA installs a chip in someone’s head, it causes severe impairment of cognitive capacity.
]]>By: AndyDiogeneshttp://pando.com/2014/03/29/google-apparently-scrubs-military-contractor-partner-listing-after-pando-report/#comment-84438
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 21:17:57 +0000http://pando.com/?p=135041#comment-84438EdisonCarter Because they’re frightened authoritarian fanbois who are alarmed that someone’s taking a run at their lords and masters? Real propagandists try harder to not look pathetic…
]]>By: Umfuldhttp://pando.com/2014/03/29/google-apparently-scrubs-military-contractor-partner-listing-after-pando-report/#comment-84378
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 12:25:36 +0000http://pando.com/?p=135041#comment-84378RayCromwell There has to be a more efficient way to say you’re an insane idiot.
]]>By: Umfuldhttp://pando.com/2014/03/29/google-apparently-scrubs-military-contractor-partner-listing-after-pando-report/#comment-84379
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 12:25:36 +0000http://pando.com/?p=135041#comment-84379RayCromwell There has to be a more efficient way to say you’re an insane idiot.
]]>By: RayCromwellhttp://pando.com/2014/03/29/google-apparently-scrubs-military-contractor-partner-listing-after-pando-report/#comment-84341
Sun, 30 Mar 2014 23:46:54 +0000http://pando.com/?p=135041#comment-84341EdisonCarter Google Sheets has been down much more than that over the year, just in the last few months it’s been down several hours. Use http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status and scroll back.

Not to mention that what appears to be down here is not the Google Sheets app, but the Google Sheets RSS/Atom Feed. After Google killed Reader the state of their GData APIs has been somewhat unloved.

Again, if Yasha went to Twitter and got the “Fail Whale” for tweets for a specific user, what would be more likely:

“They’ve scrubbed the tweets because <insert conspiracy here>!”

or

The service has a problem. Deleted Tweets look different than Service Failures.

The page is question is not “scrubbed”, it’s not an HTML document with data in it, instead it’s an empty container that pulls in data from a Google Spreadsheet/Google Docs, and renders it using Javascript. For some reason, the service which serves up the data is returning 500 Internal Server Errors, not ‘404 Not Found’ (data doesn’t exist), or ‘403 Forbidden’ (it’s been made private) This strongly indicates a problem with the service.

Why would Google spend extra effort to fake a 500 Service Error when someone could just edit the Spreadsheet with those customers it supposedly doesn’t want the public to know about, and delete them? It would take only a few minutes to delete spreadsheet rows vs trying to get engineers to make a fake service and deploy it. It would be trivial to remove, and the page would still render with other customers instead of being blank. Do you think Google Sales wants their sales landing page to be empty? That looks pretty bad to potential cloud customers that their service is unreliable.

I mean, Yasha’s article is potentially useful because maybe now they’ll notice the site is down and fix it. But unless the site comes back with those customers redacted, it’s really a case of jumping the gun and making assertions without waiting for the facts. Is this the kind of story exclusive that needed to be published before actually doing some research to find out why the page is down? These are not Snowden exclusives.

I just think this is pretty amateurish for Pando to rush out articles like this. And how likely is it that they’ll be a retraction/apology?